Sunday, February 1, 2015

Despite falling from December’s two-year
record of 54.5 to 52.9, the headline HSBC India Purchasing Managers’ Index
(PMI) remained consistent with a solid improvement in business conditions in
January.

PMI is a seasonally adjusted indicator
designed to give an accurate overview of manufacturing operating conditions.

Moreover, the latest expansion was the
fifteenth in as many months. Sector data highlighted consumer goods as the best
performing of the three market groups for the third month in a row, says HSBC
in its report.

"Manufacturing activity continued
to signal improvement in January, though the rate of growth slipped to a
three-month low. The slip can partly be attributed to consolidation after two
months of impressive upticks," said Pranjul Bhandari, Chief India Economist
at HSBC.

"New orders, both from domestic
and international sources, also continued to grow, though at a slower pace than
in December. New orders were strongest in the consumer goods sector. On the
inflation front, growth in input and output prices moderated further due to
cheaper commodity prices," he added.

"Sluggish growth and falling
inflation further reinforces our view that the RBI should deliver upfront rate
cuts. We expect the repo rate to be lowered by 75bp in the first half of
2015," said Pranjul.

10:00am Market Check

The market remained under pressure amid
consolidation following weakness in Asian equities post China data. The Sensex
fell 73.99 points to 29108.96 and the Nifty declined 16.30 points at 8792.60.

Sun Pharma gained more than 2 percent
and Ranbaxy jumped over 3.5 percent to hit record highs. The US Federal Trade
Commission approved the pharma major’s plan to buy Ranbaxy on the condition
that it divests one antibiotic product to avoid anti-competitive impact in the
US market. Torrent Pharma will acquire Ranbaxy's minocycline business in the
US.

Jet
Airways and SpiceJet rallied more than 4 percent as aviation turbine fuel (ATF)
is slashed by a steep 11.3 percent which now costs lesser than diesel. The
price of ATF, or jet fuel, in Delhi was cut by Rs 5,909.9 per kilolitre, or
11.27 per cent, to Rs 46,513.02 per kl, oil companies announced.

Friday, January 30, 2015

VISAKHAPATNAM: The dreaded swine flu seems to be spreading
its tentacles in the city with two more people testing positive for the virus.
With this, the total number of H1N1 cases has gone up to three.

The two patients -- a 65-year-old man from Abidnagar in the city and a
35-year-old woman from Vizianagaram -- are undergoing treatment at two
different private hospitals in the city. The private hospitals confirmed the
two cases as H1N1 positive after they got the swab test results from a private
laboratory in Mumbai on Friday.

A four-year-old boy has already been undergoing treatment for H1NI at the
government-run King George Hospital (KGH) for the past few days and his
condition is improving. The samples of two other people, a 12-year-old boy
undergoing treatment at KGH and a middle-aged woman from Srikakulam being treated
at the Government Hospital for Chest and Communicable Diseases, which arrived
from the Institute of Preventive Medicine (IPM) Hyderabad, have tested
negative.

On Friday, two more people, a 56-year-old woman from Kotha Road in the Old City
area and 38-year-old man from Gajuwaka, suspected of contracting swine flu were
admitted to the Government Chest Hospital.

Dr L D S H Devi, nodal officer for swine flu in Vizag district, said while the
two people admitted to private hospitals have tested positive, the samples of
two suspected cases tested at IPM turned out to be negative. "We have sent
the samples of patients admitted today to the chest hospital to IPM at
Hyderabad," she said.

Speaking to TOI, KGH superintendent M Madhusudhana Babu said all precautionary
measures are being taken to control the spread of the virus. As part of control
measures, a coordination meeting was also conducted at the KGH with the stake
holders, including Andhra Medical College (AMC)

A new study has recently revealed that men and women misinterpret the
signals regarding sexual interests a lot while having the conversation, it has
been reported. Researchers at the Department of Psychology at the Norwegian
University of Science
and Technology (NTNU), stated that women reported that men often
misinterpret their signals of friendliness as sexual interest. Conversely, the
men in the study reported that women often misinterpret their signals of sexual
interest as friendliness.

In most areas of psychology, there is little to no
difference between genders: mental capacity, intellectual achievements, food
preferences, men and women are all more or less the same. But when it comes to reproduction and
challenges related to finding a sexual partner, there are suddenly differences
to be found.

Evolutionary psychology is the study of how the human mind
has evolved, developed and adapted over time. One thing that evolutionary
psychologists are specifically interested in was gendered sexual psychology
between cultures and social groups.

Seen through the lens of evolutionary psychology, they can
better understand why men often wrongly assume that women who smile and laugh
during conversation might want to sleep with them. A man's ability to
reproduce was all about seizing every opportunity. He has to spend both money
and time on courtship, which still may not lead to sex. But it costs even more
to not try, because then he won't be able to reproduce.

A woman can have sex with multiple men over a short period
of time without producing any more children. So for men, it was a low-risk,
potentially high-reward situation for men to have sex with women whenever the
opportunity presents itself.

On the other hand, the cost was potentially great for a
woman if she thinks that a man was more sexually interested than she was. A
woman risks pregnancy, birth, nursing and raising the child, as well as lost
opportunities to reproduce with others.

Across thousands of generations, women's psychology has
evolved to set the bar higher, which means they need much clearer signals than
men before they consider sex.

The results showed that both men and women find that their
social signals are misinterpreted by the opposite sex. Women in the study
answered that they had acted friendly towards a man and had this misinterpreted
as sexual interest about 3.5 times over the past year on average. The men in
the study also reported having been misinterpreted by the opposite sex in this
way, but far less often.

The results also showed that men rarely misinterpret women
who actually do signal sexual interest. The study showed that this was
independent of whether or not the person was in a steady relationship or not

New Delhi: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) is all set to launch the Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite (SMAP)
mission today at 6:20 am PST (9:20 am EST; 1420 GMT).

Launch was originally planned for Thursday but got delayed
by 24 hours, due to high winds, NASA said.

On its website, United Launch Alliance said: “During
inspections following the January 29 launch attempt, minor debonds to the
booster insulation were identified. These insulation debonds are associated
with cryogenic conditions experienced during tanking operations and a standard
repair will be implemented”.

The space agency's Soil Moisture Active Passive satellite
(SMAP) mission is making another attempt to blast off atop a United Launch
Alliance Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

A new research led by European Molecular Biology Laboratory
and published in journal Cell has revealed the reason behind the rich diversity
found in mammals and also explained why dolphin isn’t a cat.

The research explains the reason behind the divergence of
mammals by examining genome sequences in around 29 mammals and comparing gene
regulation in liver cells from 20 key species.

The researchers explained the ways to turn changes in the
genome into differences between species which included change of protein
sequence, or by changing the way promoters or enhancers control that protein’s
expression.

The team of researches explained that even both the changes
can occur at the same time when amino acid sequences evolve very quickly.

Paul Flicek, head of Vertebrate Genomics at European
Bioinformatics Institute said that their research focuses on evolution
repurposes things that exist in all species, to make each species unique, and
by looking at gene promoters and enhancers in many different mammals, their
study demonstrated that species-specific enhancers come from ancient DNA.

“What we’ve shown is that evolution repurposes things that
exist in all species, to make each species unique,” explains
Flicek. “By looking at gene promoters and enhancers in many different mammals,
we demonstrated that species-specific enhancers come from ancient DNA – that
evolution captures DNA that’s been around for a long time, and uses it for gene
regulation in specific tissues.”

Duncan Odom of CRUK CI and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
explained that with their study findings they can now answer questions about
the functional genetics of many under-explored, and this research has also
given new insights into mammalian evolution.